TORONTO — When Brendan Shanahan became the National Hockey League’s vice-president of player safety, everybody agreed: He had taken an awful job. Brian Burke had done it — the title was different, but the gig was the same — and he always made it sound like going to war. Colin Campbell did it for 13 years, and you could see the wear and tear; he looked so tired at the end, a man surrounded by alarm clocks that could blare at any second.

Even Gary Bettman, Shanahan’s new boss, said it was probably “the worst and most thankless job in hockey.” He knew. He’d seen what was required.

Well, it appears Shanahan is a sucker for the hardest parts of the ice. On Thursday evening it broke that the Toronto native will leave the NHL to serve as president of the Maple Leafs, as first reported by The Toronto Star. Shanahan will have authority over all aspects of the hockey operation: he has been handed the keys, just as Trevor Linden was in Vancouver. Starting Monday, Brendan Shanahan will be tasked with fixing the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Brendan Shanahan (L) laughs as he watches the NHL’s 2011 Research and Development Camp at the MasterCard Centre in Toronto, Ontario. (Tyler Anderson/National Post)

Many have tried. Burke came to Toronto accompanied by martial trumpets and a Stanley Cup ring; the job battered him, and the Stanley Cup drought is now at 46 years and counting. If it’s not the worst job in hockey, running the Toronto Maple Leafs has to be on the list. As Sean McIndoe of Grantland.com wrote on Twitter, “From now on, Brendan Shanahan won’t have to suspend anything besides his sense of hope.”

Now, it’s Shanahan’s turn to try. He will need help, because like Vancouver’s new president Trevor Linden, he’s never done this job before. He has never negotiated a player contract that wasn’t his own; he has never run a scouting department; he has never had to manage the league’s salary cap. He has succeeded everywhere he’s gone, but he will require good lieutenants.

Brendan Shanahan (L) and Brian Burke (R) watch the NHL’s 2011 Research and Development Camp at the MasterCard Centre in Toronto, Ontario. (Tyler Anderson/National Post)

The man he is overtaking on the management depth chart, general manager Dave Nonis, did that kind of work for Burke in Vancouver and Toronto, and is not a man consumed by ego. But it would be difficult to have your hands taken off the wheel, no matter what. Leiweke has apparently been courting Shanahan for a while, surely with Bettman’s blessing and perhaps urging, which makes the decision to extend Nonis’s contract last summer after one 48-game playoff season all the more aggressive in retrospect. Leiweke began his tenure by saying he believed the Leafs had been fixed. As ever, in Toronto, it was a premature expression of faith.

Now Shanahan has to decide whether Randy Carlyle should stay as coach (he should not), and he will be put above Nonis. It seems unlikely to work, and not just because Burke is looking for a general manager in Calgary. You build an organization with your people, and even if working with Nonis is the plan, it doesn’t make for the easiest situation.

Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Randy Carlyle talks to his players during first period NHL action against the Winnipeg Jets in Winnipeg. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods)

Meanwhile, the Hall of Famer inherits a roster whose core has been involved in three consecutive season-ending collapses, that has never reached the playoffs in a full 82-game season, and whose defensive work was so incoherent this year that a team with scoring, goaltending and a power play managed to miss the playoffs. The 18-wheeler two seasons ago, Game 7 in Boston last year, the free fall this season, the insane shot differentials that have prompted a still-raucous war over analytics in hockey: this is a mountain at the best of times, and these are not the best of times.

The Leafs are weak up the middle, and a mess at the back end. A sensible list of necessary pieces probably includes Phil Kessel, Jonathan Bernier, James van Riemsdyk, Morgan Rielly, maybe Jake Gardiner and even Nazem Kadri. After that, let the floodwaters rise.

And into this steps Shanahan, who had his choice of jobs. He has never done this, but has built a department, helped re-imagine the game — he led the group that loosened the bonds of obstruction after the 2004-05 lockout — and has spent the last three years developing a thick skin, which he did not always carry with him during his playing career.

Ryan Miller (L) and Brendan Shanahan (R) chat during the cocktail reception hosted by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter in New York City. (Photo by Andy Marlin/Getty Images for the NHL)

That’s a fine start, and now comes the work. Now comes navigating a league where unearthing a true superstar is so difficult, unless you draft one; now comes competition with 30 guys, almost all of whom have the benefits of experience, and many of whom start with better players. Now comes figuring out how much you believe in the analytics, which are in the early days of deciphering the game.

Now comes a vision for building an organization, for building or rebuilding a team, for dealing with all the pressures and complications and weights that Toronto offers. On Monday, Shanahan will step into a dangerous blue sea that, for two years longer than he has been alive, has swallowed every man who came before. Now we see how well he swims.

There it is RT @DownGoesBrown: From now on, Brendan Shanahan won't have to suspend anything besides his sense of hope.

After graduating from the University of British Columbia, Bruce Arthur joined the Post in 2001 as a sports reporter. After covering the Toronto Raptors, he became the paper's basketball columnist in 2005... read more, its Toronto columnist in 2007, and its national columnist in 2008. His work currently appears across the Postmedia chain three times a week. Arthur was born in Vancouver, is married, and lives in Toronto.View author's profile